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From Conflict to Collaboration

Fundraising led by the Conservation Investments and Incentives Initiative and negotiated changes in logging practices led the Joint Solutions Project were instrumental in achieving landscape-scale conservation in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Nuxalkmc protest on Ista (King Island) in 1997 over unsustainable logging practices that were not supported by the Nuxalk First Nation. Photo by Ivan Hunter.

Conservation Investments and Incentives Initiative

The Conservation Investments and Incentives Initiative (CIII) was a multi-stakeholder project investigating the conditions and arrangements under which funds could be attracted to British Columbia to support conservation and conservation-based economic development in the BC central and northern coasts, including Haida Gwaii.

The first phase of work that was completed by the initiative produced:

a market assessment of interest in funding conservation-based investments on the BC Coast

a study clarifying opportunities for conservation-based economic development on the BC Coast

a background report discussing the legal mechanisms for securing conservation investment in British Columbia

The CIII led to the establishment of the Coast Funds to invest in conservation management and sustainable economic development in the north and central coasts of British Columbia and Haida Gwaii.

For more information on Coast Funds as a model for landscape-scale conservation, see our Funders.

The Joint Solutions Project

The purpose of the Joint Solutions Project (JSP) was to reduce conflict, collaborate to implement ecosystem-based management (EBM), and constructively engage with stakeholders involved in implementing the consensus land use agreements in place in the Great Bear Rainforest.

The JSP began as a unique effort between a group of forest products businesses and environmental groups interested in exploring ways to end market-based conflict over forests in the Great Bear Rainforest. To achieve this, environmental organizations (members of the Rainforest Solutions Project) worked with the forest industry (members of the Coast Forest Conservation Initiative) in a unique undertaking called the Joint Solutions Project (JSP). The purpose of the JSP was to generate new solutions to develop and implement a model for conservation and management of globally significant coastal forests —a model that fully integrates social, economic, and ecological factors.